Author Archives: Robert

Ray got a juicer today.  The first thing he did when we got home was make carrot juice.

Hamilton Beach – can’t go wrong!

The blade thingy is really sharp.

Washed and chopped carrots.

The juicer was surprisingly quiet.

Yum! No really! Yummmm.

Ray also made apple juice.  Afterwards, there was this interesting leftover carrot and apple pulp.  Knowing Ray, he’ll find good use for it. 

For dinner, he whipped up some black beans and brown rice with avocado, green onions and tomatoes.  I scarfed it down while we watched a couple of episodes of Weeds.

I’d like to say something about how my life is so full and rich but that might come across sarcastically.  It’s not.  Doesn’t take much to make me happy. 

I’m going to bed now…

Oh yeah, I think I have resolved my photo dilemma.  I found a plug-in that re-samples the images on my blog so they don’t look quite so jaggy.  It’s all good.

I’m having a photo dilemma.  Whenever I post a photo directly on my blog, it can either be a full sized image or a teeny tiny thumbnail.  To fix this, I have to go in an resize the photo making it look distorted.  I really hate that.

I have seen people upload photos from Flickr accounts to their blog.  I admit it looks infinitely better but then it’s just another step in the blogging process and you have to wait longer for the Flickr page to load when you click on the photo. 

I’m a purist when it comes to photo quality.  I can’t stand pixelated lossy compression.  That being said,  I am a realist when it comes to added layers of complexity in the blogging process.  I don’t care much for layers.  I guess I’m going to post mediocre quality images…for now.

Carrie and I had to go to a training thing in Phoenix for the American Cancer Society’s Relay For Life held here in Bisbee.  Carrie drove her convertible BMW with the top down.  Afterwards, I picked dirt out of my hair.

The Mule Mountain Relay For Life will have a website this year.  I am the Online Chairperson.  I figured since I have lost so many friends and family members to cancer I could get involved with the ACS Relays as a way to help my community. 

Carrie dropped me off in Tucson the next day.  Ray picked me up so we could visit Lori and Beth who had just relocated from Chicago.  While I was driving home on I-10 late that night, the alternator on our car died.  The good news is that it was right where we get off the freeway.   The bad news is that we were still about 60 miles from home and had to spend the night in a Motel 6.  The really bad news is that it cost $500 to fix.  The really-really bad news is that we have to make the trip out to Benson after work to pick up the car.

Today has been such a Monday.  Aside from having an all-day headache and puncturing my thumb with a mechanical pencil, I have been working with some software at work that totally sucks.  I just want to crawl into a hole and hibernate. 

At least I can look on the bright side; Friday is my flex day. 

This weekend I was faced with a tragedy.  My beloved Olympus E-20N digital SLR camera died.  It had been in a coma since the shutter locked up while I was photographing my cousin’s mural unveiling in Prescott.  I had traded in my entire Nikon F10 film camera outfit and supplemented extra cash to buy that camera.  One minute I was sitting there shooting photos and the next, everything went black–literally.  Now it’s gone and I’m afraid I don’t have the resources to replace it.  No joke, I am beside myself with grief.

It would have been five next month.  I was planning on taking it to my friend Colleen’s wedding in Chicago. 

After trying everything I could think of to make it work again, Ray took it to the Olympus repair shop in LA while I was visiting my mother.  They wanted over 220 bucks to fix it.  It doesn’t seem to make sense to pay that much money when they’re selling one still in the box for $300 on eBay.  The Olympus technician implied that it could have been caused by impact or shoving the memory card in too hard.  How could she say such a cold, cruel thing? 

I know exactly what it was–the death chip.

Have you ever noticed that electronic equipment doesn’t last very long these days?  I have gone through countless computers, electric clippers, coffee makers and cordless phones over recent years.  My Dell flat-screen monitor fried just after two years of use.  Fried as in the screen went black and the little light went out–its pupils fixed and dilated.

I suspect a consumer conspiracy is all around us.  We are so conditioned to get the latest and greatest iPhone that the manufacturers of our electronic gadgets secretly program them with a limited life span.  Logan’s Run meets Panasonic.  God forbid I should ever have an artificial heart.

Ray has his uncle’s old General Electric alarm clock.  On the bottom there is a date.  1949.  It still works perfectly.  Our sound system in the living room is powered by a 1977 JVC receiver.  That thing has been to hell and back–but it still works like a charm.  While today’s technology is amazing, the craftsmanship is for shit. 

Goodbye my Olympus E-20N.  Your demise is bittersweet.  I will miss you but deep down inside I am angry because you were a poorly manufactured camera that I paid way too much money for.  You will live on in vain through your accessories that I can no longer use.

Before we went to Lost Angeles, we stopped in Phoenix to see Huw and Eric.  They have a totally fabulous place right near the Biltmore Hotel.  We ate lots of great food, went running and hiking and laid out by the pool.  It felt kind of like being at a resort.  They even have one of those Brookstone massage chairs!

We left kinda early the next morning but in the long run it was for the best because it took a quite a while to get to my mom’s house. 

I was bummed because Huw–who is a damn good cook–was going to make breakfast.

The past few times I have been in SoCal to see my mother, I’ve noticed that my quiet little hometown has turned into a wannabe upscale community.  When my family moved there in 1970, Thousand Oaks was a sleepy tract-home haven with a small outdoor mall and a friendly relaxed attitude.  Now it’s full of anorexic Crackberry toting soccer moms wearing those ginormous sunglasses that don’t look good on anybody except Jackie O.  The outdoor mall has become a “marketplace” and the Chevy Impala station wagons have been replaced by luxury SUV’s complete with Bluetooth® technology and a Get-The-Fuck-Out-Of-My-Way driver. 

There are so many people I know who just love it out there.  To be honest, I just don’t understand the appeal of living in Assholeland.  The people were pushy, well dressed and rude.  Everywhere you looked was a store or plaza or whatever the fuck they call them now.  We all know what they really are.  They’re strip malls.

Thousand Oaks was a beautiful place to grow up with rolling hills, ranches, 1957 Chevy pick up trucks and, yes, thousands of oak trees.  We lived in a sub division called Shadow Oaks.  Every year there was a big festival called Conejo Valley Days.  As a kid, I remember crawling out of my skin in anticipation when the event came near.  There was a chili cook-off, rodeo, parade and my personal favorite, a midway.  The best ride hands down was the Zipper. 

Conejo Valley Days originally started as a community circus in the late 1940s.  It was a reflection of the local culture.  It was always very rancher-cowboy like and probably the defining influence on my out of control gay libido.  Unfortunately it’s changing–Conejo Valley Days that is.  The libido is just fine.

During my visit, mother told me they did away with the rodeo this year and in its place they had some ConejoX Invitational Freestyle Motocross Competition.  They tried to cancel the parade but some company stepped in and paid the insurance bond.  They can’t do a parade because of insurance but they can have a Freestyle Motocross Competition?  Since when did marching in a band become so hazardous?  Lookout!  There’s a stray baton twirler!  Someone cover her with a blanket!

To make matters worse, they had a Radio Disney Concert Night with some teeny bopper all girl band.  Once Disney infects your local community fair, you’re fucked. 

While I sat and listened to my mother, I realized there really has been quite a long passage of time since those days.  Everything seems to be going faster and faster.  There’s no turning back…I am getting older.  A sudden wave of melancholy swept over me.  Mother looked at me and said, “Your hair seems lighter.”  and I said, “No ma. It’s just turning gray.”

It was house cleaning time last night.  Doesn’t that sound exciting? 

Ray and I have a deal.  I’ll do the vacuuming and dusting if he does the “better living through chemicals” thing. 

I can’t stand household cleansers.  Those scrubbing bubbles make my head throb–not in a good way.  They look so cute and unassuming in the commercials but in reality, they’re about as creepy and sinister as a circus clown.

And don’t get me started on the “safe” stuff either.  Simple Green?  Simple Gag.  I’d much rather stay on the other side of the room with my feather duster inhaling dead skin cells thank you very much.

We’re leaving for Lost Angeles today.  My mother is recovering from her knee replacement surgery so I figured this would be a good time to see her.  I’d flirted with the idea of going out for Thanksgiving and Christmas but after all the travel we’ve gone through these past few months, I just don’t have the energy or the desire. 

It’s always a trip going home to the 1960’s planned community I grew up in.  It’s one of those places where no matter who’s house you’re in, you always knew where the bathroom was.  At least enough time has elapsed to where it’s not quite so cookie cutter anymore.  Decades of landscaping has blessed the old ‘hood with its own distinctive personality.  Families have come and gone leaving behind a trail of room additions, cobblestone driveways and Malibu lighting.  The thing that really stands out is the ample parking.  I lived in Chicago proper for ten years.  You paid for a parking space.

My family moved to Shadow Oaks in 1970 when I was four.  Our house was on a small street that had a clu-de-sac on both ends.  Talk about a mind fuck.  You had to drive into the middle of our street to get in…or get out.

My childhood experience was dull and colorless like a set of faded double prints.  The only excitement was the yearly trip to Disneyland– which, I admit, is very exciting for a kid but it’s a whole different experience as an adult.  Little did I know that I would grow up and become turned off by the giant corporate machine that is Disney sucking what money it can from one generation to the next by re-releasing the same “Classic Special Edition” movies over and over again.  You’re going to have happy memories with Disney products.  You’re also going to pay for them.  Since we did not have much money, I relied on TV for my happy Disney memories every Sunday night.  They were free because they were brought to you in part by Kraft.

So there I was growing up in suburbia unaware that it would later become the punchline of social opinion. (See Weeds–it’s on Showtime!)  

 My mom has a picture of me riding my bike in the Conejo Valley Days parade wearing my cub scout uniform.  Maybe that’s why the memories seem faded.  The only things I really remember are things that have an old photo associated with them.

My dad was the soccer and baseball coach.  The end of season pool parties were always at our house.  Everybody on our street knew each other and if Mrs. Abbondondola yelled at you it was just a valid as if it were your own mom.

I have ambivalent feelings about those years.  It was safe and fairly normal.  My parents didn’t divorce until I was in jr. high.  That’s not so bad.  It could have been worse.  I could have been a little kid.  My brothers and sisters were all fairly level headed.  No one got pregnant or crashed the car.  If anything, I was the black sheep getting expelled from school and doing other assorted things I don’t care to discuss anymore.

What really sucked was being the only adopted kid out of six and knowing at a very very young age that I was gay.  That was scary to say the least.  I was sandwiched in age between to alpha male brothers who along with their friends threw around the word faggot like they had Tourette’s.  I lived in fear that if they found out why I was so fixated on the men’s underwear section in the Sears catalog they would find me defective and trade me in for a new kid. 

Thankfully, those days are over and I am going back there as an adult where none of those scary things can get to me anymore.  They’re all just memories that blur out more and more every year.  Someday, I won’t be going back there at all.  Some other family will move in and a new kid will have to fight his way up through the trenches of suburbia.